Last Friday we headed down to the Majestic cinema to watch the latest action of the web slinging superhero in Spiderman 3. Although the film itself did not live up to my expectations, going to the cinema proved to be a decent way to escape the heat of Colombo.

The film starts showing our friendly neighbourhood Spider having settled down to a nice rhythm in love with the girl of his dreams, studies on track and also managing his superhero duties pretty well. Then the story gets scattered in too many directions and seems all over the place.

The other thing that struck me is that Peter Parker needs to take up some crying lessons; he was terrible at it. Merill who was in the next seat promptly suggested that Peter should take lessons from Shah Rukh Khan!

The action, animations and special effects where pretty decent. In that sence it was it was a decent enough movie. Kids are bound to like it more than the adults. So, if you’re interested you can book your tickets at www.Etickets.lk which now includes the Savoy Cinema, Majestic Cinema and the Liberty Cinema. Alternatively there is mticket; a new service from Dialog GSM exclusively for its post-paid customers, where you can dial 444 and make a reservation. I haven’t  tried it yet so I’m not sure how good it is.

I guess it’s pretty late to be posting something with a movie that was release a couple of years back, but hey, I only just watched it!

I ended the year 2006 watching Pirates of the Caribbean - The Curse of the Black Pearl (yep, no partying this year). This is the first in the series, and I thought it was pretty good movie, which is mainly due to the wonderful job by Johnny Depp in portraying Jack Sparrow, I mean Captain Jack Sparrow.

Since they were showing the second of the series Dead Man's Chest at Majestic, the only obvious thing to do on the afternoon of the 1st Jan seemed like going and watching it. So, Thisitha and I headed off to Majestic Cinema. We ended up there a little too early so we had a few rounds of pool where I kicked ass might I add! poor ol Thusitha didn’t stand a chance! He’ll remember that as the day he almost beat me at pool! Oh and the film was a blast too.

So.. it just looks like those Britney Spears photos that were floating around all over the place in the internet were not fake after all.. at least maybe not all of them..

In a statement that somewhat sounds like an apology to her fans, she says "I probably did take my new found freedom a little too far".

But hey, it’s not all bad; take this guy for example, he earned a weeks’ worth of revenue in 2 days thanks to Britney! Nothing too astounding when you consider the fact that “Britney” is the top search word on the planet!

Click to view larger image of the screenshot from www.britneyspears.com

No, I'm not talking of all those rumors about what she's been doing. In fact, Jamie Kennedy's find would have hopefully put a stop to that nonsense.

Yahoo! Buzz has released the top searches of 2006, and Britney Spears has got the top spot. Again.

1. Britney Spears
2. WWE
3. Shakira
4. Jessica Simpson
5. Paris Hilton
6. American Idol
7. Beyonce Knowles
8. Chris Brown
9. Pamela Anderson
10. Lindsay Lohan

I couldn’t find the overall top searches for 2005, 2006 on Google Zeitgeist but looking at 2004 most popular overall search and the Top Women searches, Britney Spears has been riding high for a while now.

Yahoo! top searches for 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006
Google top searches for 2003, 2004, 2005

Looking at the all this one thing is clear, the internet is for entertainment, and is not the intellectual hub that those of us who work in tech would like to think it is.

Mass Media and Information Minister Anura Priyadharashana Yapa has suspended the radio broadcast of RAJA FM in accordance with the powers entrusted on him under the Societal Good Conduct Act. No. 37 of 1996...[Daily news]

Recently there were some emails circulating protesting the broadcast the RAJA FM radio station claiming it to be a vulgar and pornographic broadcast. The emails also contained attachments claiming to be clippings from the show that confirmed the pornographic nature of the program. I didn’t think these were "real" because it was hard to think a public radio station would actually air such programs. But I was wrong.

The show was supposedly on sexual education. A female presenter in her early 20s’ would read out letters sent by young listeners describing things like how they were seduced by an attractive female neighbor into having sex and that he’s afraid that he’ll get caught. Then an "advisor" would comment on it and hand out some "advice". It reminded me of the early-mid 90's when all of a sudden there were these "educational" sex magazines all over the country. Imagine a young girl reading out stories from those magazines to you, that’s exactly what the RAJA FM program sounded like.

There are mixed views on how the situation was handled by the Media and Information Minister. Some people think it was too harsh, some think the suspension is part of a of a conspiracy! However in my view I think it’s a good that the station was suspended. The company should probably be fined as well. Basically the station should be given some "tough love".

Yesterday I went out to watch a film, I hadn’t been out to see a one in a while. My options were either a Hindi film, "Snakes on a plane" (Such a creative title! I wonder what that film is about...?) or "Yours Mine and Ours", I didn’t really have much of a choice.

So I headed down to the Savoy cinema and got tickets for "Yours Mine and Ours". As I was entering the hall, my first thought: “this stinks!” literally! They were screening the show in what is called Savoy(2). It’s basically an oversized home theater system setup in what once used to be a corridor of the building, and did I mention it stinks inside?

The film, well... what can I say, it was just not a good day.